


Les Hivers de mon enfance

by garden of succulents (staranise)



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Ableist Language, Bad Bob is a good dad, Canon Disabled Character, Canon LGBTQ Male Character, Child Abuse, Epistolary, Faint Transphobia, Gen, Hazing, Jack's Peewee team, Men Doing Emotional Labour, Pre-Canon, Self-Harm, Sexist Language, Sexual Assault, Somewhat Hockey-Negative, Substance Abuse, Suicide, Toxic Hockey Culture, toxic masculinity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-05
Updated: 2016-04-05
Packaged: 2018-05-31 11:31:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,975
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6468580
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/staranise/pseuds/garden%20of%20succulents
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What do you do when hockey is the language of prayer for your soul, and also the toxic thing that almost killed you? </p><p>2009: Jack Zimmermann takes a mental health year. God knows he needs it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Les Hivers de mon enfance

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks so much to Lalaietha for advice and help hashing out my feelings about growing up on the hockey-mad prairies, and to Cesy, Stultiloquentia, Commodorified,and RMC28 for their cheerleading and support!
> 
> Author's notes: [Dreamwidth](http://staranise.dreamwidth.org/564020.html) / [Tumblr](http://star-anise.tumblr.com/post/142306226349/authors-notes-for-les-hivers-de-mon-enfance)

_You are about to be told one more time that you are America's most valuable natural resource._

 _Have you_ _seen_ _what they do to valuable natural resources?_

-Utah Phillips, _The Past Didn't Go Anywhere_

*

Two months after Jack gets out of rehab there is frost on the backyard grass. The trees outside are bleak and leafless. His father has already risked the snow covering the grass and melting away once now without putting the boards of the rink out. He didn't mention it, not the boards or the snow, not once. He has been so very careful in the things he has said and not-said around Jack. And Jack suspects that his father is willing, this year, to forgo a backyard rink for Jack to practice on, even if this will be the first winter in five years where he's home for more than a few weeks.

So he goes out himself, one afternoon, and unlocks the shed tucked against the garage and thronged around with rattling raspberry canes. He weights the corners of the rink tarp with landscaping rocks and hauls the boards out, two under each arm, to drop around its edge. He could do it blindfolded; he will never not know how big this rink is. His parents come home to find him silently working and they stare out the kitchen window at him, then look at each other nervously. His father changes out of his dress clothes into jeans and a sweater and goes outside to help. They work together, holding the boards up until they line up enough for one clamp to screw into the next. They have done it many times before.

Jack actually cannot imagine how he's going to survive the winter ahead _without_ this backyard rink. He misses hockey with a fundamental itch so strong it's almost enough to make him find an indoor rink and walk into it past the voices that make his skin crawl and the eyes that burn down onto him. It's an addiction so fundamental that when his coach left him a voicemail asking if he was coming back to preseason Jack kept listening to it, over and over, and kept himself from calling back with trembling hands and racing heart. They were so willing to paste something over the entire summer, declare it an _off season_ and welcome him back, put him right back where he ought to be. "Like if you had appendicitis," his coach had promised him. "You were sick, you took some time to yourself, July and August is the best time for it. So what, you missed summer camp. You still have a spot on our team." Of course they want him back, he knows; the forward line without him is raw and vulnerable, never got to really develop when there was him and Kent and Marcel.

The best term he has for the rink out back is _sanctuary_ , like when you reach the sanctified ground of a church and can't be apprehended by the law or seized by your enemies. Nobody can come get him here, no coach barking orders, no cameras, no crowd. The only eyes through the kitchen window are concerned and not hungry. He's disappointed them as much as he thinks he ever could, but they're still there. His parents don't want part of him; they've decided they want _all_ of him, the broken parts too, if the alternative is losing him altogether.

He never calls his coach, or assistant coach, or agent, or team captain, back. He doesn't have anything to say. When the weather starts to freeze for good he and his dad take turns going out in the morning and flooding the rink in the light of dawn.

*

_Dear Jack,_

_I read that you are out of hospital and doing OK and I'm glad. I'm 17 and play right wing with the WHL in Ft Mac. We had a real good season last year and I got 8 goals and 22 assists._

_I just wanted to know, have you ever been on a team with somebody you really didn't like? Some of our starting forwards I really didn't get along with when I started on the team two years ago and he's still just an asshole, like, if I screw up during a game he says he'll do stuff like rape me, and Coach told him to leave me alone and it's basically just talk except I know he could actually do it since he & his buddies hazed me into the team. So I just want to know how to just keep focused on the game and play the best hockey I can without letting it get to me and wanted to know if you knew anything about that?_

_Thanks, all the best & good luck this season_

_Sam Corey_

*

He actually finds a pick-up league in the Montreal Sports and Leisure directory. He goes on evenings when he's been in the house too long and his head won't shut up no matter how much he skates, how many drills he does. It feels, though it isn't, more anonymous than doing the ice paths at Parc Lafontaine. Everyone in the league responds to his presence with the shellshocked nonchalance of someone who just found the Pope at the end of their pew and is determined not to make a big deal out of it, so he gets to sit down with his bag of gear and change into his pads with everybody else.

These aren't anything like professional hockey players. They're salesmen and electricians, truckers and university students, not even part of one of the competitive rec leagues. They play hockey less than once a week, don't do much that counts as team practice, and during the first game he isn't even trying too hard but he hears one of them drop into English to whisper, "We are getting fucking _creamed,_ man."

He thinks really, really hard before going back a second time. It's actually one of the most terrifying things he's done. It's frightening the way swallowing the second handful of pills was frightening, the way he felt when weeks started going by without him calling his coach back. Underneath all the panic and pressure of being Jack Zimmermann he's finding something darker and fiercer than anything else in him that says: _No, I can't. No, I won't._ It sends panic swarming up his throat when he thinks of playing competitively again and it completely wrecked him the one time a trainer came to the house to coach him in the back yard. It happens any time his dad gives him a pointer, to the point that they've agreed he won't even comment on Jack's skating at all.

He used to think that it was him _cracking_ , him _crumbling_ , him giving in under pressure, unable to meet expectations. "Everybody else's expectations," his therapist commented. "You still manage to put pressure on yourself pretty well, and if it's something you _want_ to do, instead of what you think you _should_ do, you pull it off."

What the panic actually feels like, when he stops and lets himself actually feel the lump in his throat and the way his head wants to tip forward, the tension in his biceps and the way his whole core engages, is like being in the middle of a fight on ice, being checked and piled up on, when he knows he's going to need to fight his way out until somebody shows up to pull the guys off him. He tells his therapist so.

"Self-defense," she says, head tilted slightly. "Like you need to protect yourself."

"And my game," he says, unthinkingly. "It's about everyone getting in the way of how I play. Like if I don't defend it, my _hockey_ will get damaged or hurt."

Which to him, is ridiculous; the point of coaches and trainers and all the people who watch him play is to _improve_ his hockey, to make it better. He knows it's arrogant and reckless to think nobody has anything to tell him about the way he plays. His therapist, on the other hand, talks about "a wiser part of yourself that knows what you need, even if the people around you don't." He lets her talk him into giving the pick-up league, the only time he _hasn't_ frozen up on the ice when other people are around, another chance.

So he rides the edge of fear and goes, defiantly, with her instructions to pretend he's playing a different game. In Jack Zimmermann's game, putting the puck in the net is an auxiliary action, not actually related to success; he's experimenting with defining success for himself. He finds a different objective every time, which is usually giving assists to whoever is most capable of receiving them; sometimes he plays defense and, touching the puck itself as little as possible, gets in and around people as much as he can to fuck with their game without actually fouling them. When he sees dirty play, which is rarely, he dedicates himself to pasting the offender into the boards whenever the opportunity presents itself.

There's one of the guys who shows up pretty regularly; Jack's spoken to him a couple of times. His name's Farhad and he's a nurse at the ER who works really crazy shifts, so he can't join a regular league, but he used to play AHL until he blew out his knee. He went to college with one of the guys who plays there too, who gets a call to hang around for a second game because Farhad's date just blew him off and it's his birthday and he really needs to blow off steam, and they'll go out for dinner after.

Jack makes a call of his own and re-laces his skates for third period. Farhad is... Farhad usually plays centre, but when Jack's around he'll move over to left wing. He's fucking _good_ , doesn't need Jack to do much more than get the puck within ten feet of him. He taped up somebody's knee a couple weeks ago, made an impromptu nosebleed-plugger out of the med kit's tongue depressors and medical tape before that and stuck it on a nose that just refused to stop. And he's gay, which his friends all know. He's the kind of guy that, if Jack were some other person in some other year, Jack might actually talk to more, get to know; might ask out on a date. He won't, but the _potential_ kind of tortures him.

By the time Farhad walks in their first game is over and the other guys are changing to leave, scraping together a new set of teams for game 2, or loitering against the boards with incredibly studied nonchalance. Jack's practicing his crossovers and Jack's dad is on the ice, but leaning over to sign a waiver form a nervous rink attendant is holding on a clipboard. "Sorry, I don't have the registration fee on me," Bob Zimmermann says. "My wallet's in my jeans."

"That's okay," she squeaks. "We can collect it after."

Jack glides over to where Farhad's just kind of standing there and exchanging incredulous glances with his friends, his hockey bag next to his feet and his scarf sliding off his shoulder. "Hey, man," Jack says, fiddling with a bit of loose tape at the end of his stick. "You gonna play tonight?"

Farhad stares for a second and then he _grins_ , delighted and--Jack can't tell what else, but he looks lit up inside. "Yeah," he says, the smile not beat down by the words, and grabs his hockey bag. "Yeah, give me, like--five minutes, okay, bro? I'll be _right_ back."

Jack ducks his head and grins to himself. His dad, skating by, punches his shoulder.

After that game a lot of the panic subsides in Jack's chest, and Farhad remains a Facebook friend and a cherished memory, a never-was who could have been. Jack didn't even go to dinner with him and everyone else when they invited him, but he feasts continually on the knowledge that he _could_ have, that there was another universe, a different chain of causality, where he went out to dinner with them and on some late night, under streetlights in snow, he managed to say words that frightened him and hands met hands and lips met lips and Farhad taught him what to be if he wasn't a hockey player anymore

Well, it's a thought.

What he does do is come downstairs the next Tuesday and get a cup of coffee in the kitchen where Bob's friends, a group of old and creaking men whose NHL careers weren't kind on their knees, are preparing for their weekly game of backyard shinny. Bob watches him with veiled concern when he smiles and trades jokes with them, but he doesn't interfere when Jack agrees to lace up his skates and come out with them.

It's grossly impractical, but the thought returns to gnaw on him again and again, years later: everyone should get an experience like his. He learned as much about hockey in that winter of shinny with the retired pros and one-on-ones with his dad as he learned in the last two of Juniors. It's not just skills, it's perspective. It's the way they talk about balancing games and seasons against injuries and illnesses and divorces and bereavements, about their strategies for living over the long term. They have long, circling conversations, again and again, as a group, about how not to turn into bitter old men defined only by their glory days.

Jack drinks his coffee and soaks it all up. He already knows how to skate through a broken ankle, though acute pain; what he has to learn that winter is something more searing and essential, about skating out to hit your limits when those limits cannot be pushed, only slammed into and given submission.

*

_TO: Jack Zimmermann_

_It was so AWESOME to see you at our game! Thanks again for coming. :) The Gazette at home published the picture of you with Chelsea, Marie-Josée, Shanique and Dakota on the FRONT PAGE in COLOUR. You should feel very honoured! We don't even get a picture when we make Provincials. ;P ;P ;P We all autographed a copy for you so you can prove you knew us when we are all RICH and FAMOUS ;P_

_We also got really good news this week that Assistant Coach Sam is going to play PROFESSIONAL RINGETTE IN FINLAND--we're all super excited for her!_

_You are welcome back at ANY of our games, anytime._

_XOXOXOXOXOXOXO_

_THE VALMONT VALKYRIES_

*

Jack's therapist has a sign in her waiting room year-round for the December 6 memorial ceremony for the École Polytechnique massacre. She's not really like the sports psychologist Jack saw when he was 16 and he first told his parents about his anxiety. He had trophies and team photos and posters with basketball hoops and motivational sayings and he called himself a "coach". Thérèse sees child prodigies and Gifted children and knows more about ringette than hockey, since that's what her daughter plays. Her office has a framed scroll with Japanese kanji and a tall bookshelf full of little toys and a sand tray like in Kindergarten for when she works with kids.

"It's so weird," he says, looking down at his knees. "Apparently they all go to the same Alcoholics Anonymous group and they meet at the restaurant after. A lot of them never played hockey together. They met through AA. Robert started drinking when he threw out his back. He used to have to drink before all his games to be able to even go out on the ice. It's what ended his career. But there's enough of them that there's a whole group with just hockey players with drinking problems in it."

"Maybe," Thérèse says very neutrally, "there's something about hockey that encourages people to use alcohol to deal with their emotions?"

He snorts. "You mean like the parties? Do you know," he informs her, "I was fifteen the first time somebody snuck a keg into my room at a tournament. There's supposed to be chaperones and everything, but _everyone_ gets around it. Kent and I used to hide beer in our hockey bags. That's just how people celebrate."

"What if someone who played hockey didn't want to drink?"

"At a party? Yeah, I don't know. If you were just drinking a pop someone would come along and say, you're not just drinking that, let me put something in it. It's hard to say no."

"So it's not exactly an accident that you were drinking a lot last year."

He snorts again, grinning wryly, and shakes his head.

"Okay, Jack, so can I ask about something you said a couple weeks ago?" She flips back the pages on her yellow legal pad, using the end of her pen to read through the lines. "We were talking about your suicide attempt and you said you were making a lot of bad choices, you didn't know why but you were—" her pen touches something on the page and she reads straight off it, " _just fucked up._ You said that drinking was a problem you just kind of developed."

"Okay," he says, waiting to see what her point is.

"Okay, so what I'm wondering is, how does that, how does that story, that you were just fucked up, how does that square against what you're telling me now, that everybody drinks, everybody was drinking, that people pressured you to drink if you weren't drinking? Maybe I don't understand, can you explain those things for me?"

Jack shrugs. "I think just more people, uh, they were like, able to handle it better. They made better choices and maybe they knew when to stop. It didn't turn into a problem for them."

"So some people were able to be healthy with it, yeah?" He nods, and she goes on. "But enough people weren't that they can fill whole AA groups with hockey players. It's not just you. These older guys are telling you, we had the same problems too, and it really hurt our careers."

He shrugs again. "Yeah, I guess. At least it lets me know, it's not just me."

"It's not just you," she agrees. "It actually sounds pretty common, like it's expected that hockey players are going to have problems with alcohol."

"Yeah, it happens a lot. I mean, Brian Fogarty, Craig McTavish… There's a lot."

"So Jack, what I'm wondering is, are these guys, are all of you, hockey players who just happen to drink, or is there something about hockey and the culture around it that means you're kind of set up to have problems with alcohol?"

*

_Dear Jack Zimmermann,_

_Thank you for signing my card for my dad. I've started a new binder for Junior cards now. It's super exciting because in a couple years I might be one of them._

_I'm sorry that you overdosed but I thought it might help to know you're not alone. I did the same thing too. 2 years ago I took some of my dad's pills. But I'm seeing a counselor now and it's a lot better. I hope you get better too. I think you're awesome._

_Love,_

_Tod Gladue_

*

Watching Bernard's Peewee team play is always a tiny bit hysterical because at 10 the boys have really started mastering their basic skills, but they can't yet think strategically as a team. At least once a game one of the boys Gets the Puck--the capitals visible in the invisible words floating above their heads, all caps in French--and he is Going to Score. It doesn't fucking matter if he got it behind his own goal; he is going to take that goddamned puck and skate it down the entire fucking rink and Do a Slapshot, All by Himself, Into the Goal. He is absolutely impervious to the screaming of his coaches, his teammates, the spectators; he is undaunted by the opposing players who swarm around him like gnats. His own teammates, out in the open and desperate for him to pass them an assist, go invisible. He has visions of glory and he is going to fucking _score._

He never does, and it's this scenario that Jack and their head coach spend most of their time trying to train the boys to avoid. And it is, to be fair, incredibly bad hockey. But every time any of the boys do it--the other team or his own's--this warm bubble of laughter and affection swells up in Jack's chest and he has to keep a grin from cracking his face wide open. There's just something so _earnest_ about it, so fucking _pure_. They always seem so absolutely fucking certain that for once in their lives they have chosen to do the right fucking thing and they are _doing_ it.

He loves them so fucking much, and one day Jean-Michel is in the middle of it when Jack sees him sublimate a piece of stick-handling drill on ice, defend his puck, _stick his head up_ , and in a revelation as visible as a bolt of lightning coming from the sky see that his centre man is open. The pass isn't technically perfect but it's _instant_ , realization and setup happening so naturally and so fast that the puck is sailing down the ice before the cluster realize it's gone from their midst, and Jack is on his feet with a triumphant whoop the moment it's away because he got it, he fucking _got_ it, and it was _beautiful._

The centre intercepts the pass and even sets up for a shot on net, which the goalie blocks, and a voice rings out above Jack's shoulder: _" JEAN-MICHEL, YOU FUCKING CUNT."_

Jack is back up again in an instant, turned to face the stand, and he brings one arm down to point at Jean-Michel's father with a finger as accusatory and authoritative as a referee's. _"You!"_ he mouths through the plexiglass, a thundercloud in his face, and slashes his hand across his throat. _"Shut it!"_

He's actually turned back to the rink and recording the play on his clipboard, Bernard sorting out who needs to go on the ice at the shift change, when he sees Jean-Michel's father in the corner of his eye. The guy has actually come _down the stands_ to talk to him, obstinate and pugnacious.

Jack steps onto the bench and turns to face him, coldly furious. "If you say anything like that again," he breaks in, "I'll eject you from the rink. Now we have hockey to play."

Then he steps down off the bench, turns around, and crouches down to debrief the sweaty, panting new arrivals. Bernard looks at him uneasily, then turns away and shouts encouragement to his team.

"I try not to confront Paul in public," Bernard explains later, when they have a brief moment of quiet as their team shuffles off into the locker room. "I know he has a lot of pride, and if I embarrass him he takes it out on Jean-Michel at home."

Jack stares for a minute, not sure he heard right. "I'm sorry, he fucking _what?_ "

Bernard raises his hands, defeat and self-defence. "Youth Protection intervened with them last year. Jean-Michel stayed with an aunt while Paul took anger management and parenting classes. They've got a social worker. I'm sure it's not as bad as it was, but I've learned with Paul it works not to push."

"No, I'm sorry, that's bullshit--"

Bernard stops him by lightly touching his arm. "Okay then. Keep your mouth shut and follow me."

Paul the fucktard father is in the hallway outside the dressing room, fuming and standing apart from the other parents. Bernard greets him warmly, if not enthusiastically. "Hey Paul! Your kid had a great game. He's really catching on about teamwork, eh?"

Paul looks at Bernard suspiciously, his eyes flicking to Jack. His hands are on the back of his hips in an attitude of impatient annoyance. He looks away and out of the corner of his mouth he says, "Yeah, I guess."

Bernard takes a step forward and drops his voice, low and confidential. "I know you know what you said out there was unacceptable, hey? These are kids, let's leave off that kind of language for a couple years. He did great. It's not his fault his assist didn't make a goal."

Paul stares at the wall, but the tension around his throat and mouth work to make a subvocal movement that might pass as ‘sure'. Bernard puts a hand on his arm, jovially. "Paul, you know me. I don't go easy on these kids. I'm not one of these touchy-feely ‘everybody gets a prize' people. I look at results. I do what works. And I know you know that screaming at your players for doing something new is the way to freeze their initiative. You know your boy _wants_ to succeed. His own failures are punishment enough. You don't need to scream at him because you're disappointed. You're going to get the best results out of him by being encouraging and positive, giving him lots of chance for practice to figure his own abilities out. When we put kids in a pressure cooker and take away their chances to learn by failure, we don't make them stronger and smarter. It just means they fail harder than ever when they finally do screw up."

Paul is actually listening to this, investing in it, agreeing. When Bernard talks about the pressure cooker his eyes go back to Jack again, steady and contemplative, and Jack can't help but stare back even if there's no hostility in it. And Bernard leaves it at that, wading through the crowd of parents to with greeting and jokes to reach the dressing room door.

Bernard addresses the boys with congratulation, encouragement, criticism, and advice; he makes reference to Jack's clipboard of stats while Jack distributes stickers for good play (including one to Jean-Michel for his pass) and awards the Sportsmanship water bottle to Felix with strict instructions _not_ to leave it behind at school, and to bring it back at the next practice.

When the boys are gone and Jack and Bernard are packing up to leave, Jack says quietly, "Okay. We'll try your way. But if he says that kind of thing again I _will_ eject him."

Bernard shakes his head. "You're too close to their age. It makes you too protective."

True, Jack is ten years away from the Peewees, instead of forty or so. He shakes his head. "I don't think ‘too' is the word you're looking for."

"Okay." Bernard puts his hands on Jack's shoulders, looking earnestly into his face. "You can escort Jean-Michel's father out of the arena. Because I trust you as a role model he looks up to to show a boy with a violent, angry father that violence and anger aren't the right answer here."

Jack stares at him, bitterly absorbing the guilt trip. "You're a son of a bitch."

"I do my job." Bernard hoists his bag onto his shoulder. "I do what works."

*

_Dear Jack_

_Thank you SO MUCH for your card!!! I can't believe you wrote back!!!_

_My friend came over to my place and took all my knives away and I bought an electric razor with my allowance. That was a really good idea! Your therapist is pretty smart. [...]_

_I talked to a counsellor at my school and she told my parents because I was a "danger to myself" so now I'm grounded for FOREVER except for hockey. My dad is so fucking pissed. [...] I'm still seeing the guidance counsellor though. Now I look forward to practice all the time and coach says he can fit me in for another practice a week. [...] I showed him your card and he was so stoked._

_Thank god for hockey!!!_

_Steve Eaglund_

*

So, here's the question.

Say that you're a hockey player the way other people are artists or mystics or priests. Say that hockey is the one thing in your life that makes everything else make sense, that makes everything else _worth it._ And doing it on your own hardly even makes sense compared to doing it on a team, because the experience of falling into common cause, common struggle, with them is almost more beautiful than anything else. And you're not actually sure what you'd do without it. More to the point: You aren't sure who you'd _be_ without it.

But you're half sure that if you went back to where you were you'd commit suicide before the year was out. It may be the language of prayer for your soul, but it's also the toxic thing that nearly killed you, and you don't know how to pull the beautiful parts away from the poisonous ones.

So you know this and you've only just begun to find yourself an answer and it's a summer day in June, a warm breath of wind in the trees. Your first love, your best friend, is stretched across a towel on your floating dock, his chest sparkling with lake water. He's been, in many different ways, begging you to come back for a solid hour. (A solid week. A solid year.) He came as a friend but he came carrying a message from his team, which says: they want you back as badly as ever, and they are willing to give up a _lot_ to have you. (He carried the message because he and his team are saying very similar things, which is the only reason you forgive him, but it stings that they used _him_ to get around the defenses you've erected against them, around your agent, your father, your father's agent.)

The question is, how do you _tell_ him any of that?

Kent Parson looks pale and almost sickly this side of NHL playoffs, like an exhaustion too deep to shake, but at the same time he glows with animation talking about it. He's absolutely open about his pleading, the way he was open the night before when they watched other people win the Stanley Cup and he punched Jack in the arm and said, "Next year. That should be us."

"Are you out to any of your teammates?" Jack asks bluntly, leaning back on his arms.

Kent glares at him, face saying _don't be ridiculous._ "I'm not planning on sleeping with any of them, if that's what you're asking."

"It's not. Are you?"

"No. So?"

"Montréal Pride's this August. I was thinking of going. Want to come with me?"

Kent is starting to look pissed. "I don't know. I might be busy."

"Has Amery stopped beating his wife?"

Kent waves away what's probably a mosquito. "You didn't hear? She divorced him."

Jack looks away in annoyance, his tongue thick with words he can't actually articulate. "Parse, if I go into the NHL I'll go crazy a second time. I'm sorry. I can't play with you."

Kent lifts himself up on one elbow. "It's still that bad?"

"No, it isn't, which is the point. I miss hockey. Like crazy. But everything else about it, I can't handle. This year I've been so much better. I've been… happy, sometimes. I can maybe imagine a future beyond putting on an NHL jersey and I couldn't a year ago. I can't just ignore that."

"But man, what else would you _do?_ "

"I've been thinking. I'd have to figure it out anyway if I ended my career with an injury. I..."

Kent says plaintively, "But I don't know how to _do_ another year without you, Zimms."

He can't help but sound dismissive. "Then get professional help, Parse. I can't come back. Not even for you."

"Not ever?"

Jack shrugs. "Maybe when I'm older. When I'm stronger. When I figure out how to do it without killing myself. Any part of myself. I… still want to, even if it's just to prove people wrong. Or to make them listen when I say hey, this is fucked up."

"What's fucked up?"

It makes Jack laugh, a sudden hysterical reflex. "You have to ask? _Everything._ Killing ourselves over this sport that's not worth dying for. But that's not the kind of thing I can say right now. I don't have any credibility; it'll just sound like sour grapes. Or an excuse."

"Yeah," Kent agrees. The grasshoppers sing out and Jack slaps a mosquito. "What _are_ you gonna do this year? Coach more kids?"

"I'm going to college," Jack says. Kent looks at him, sharply; there's a lot of the process Jack didn't let him know about. "They've got a decent team. Good academic program." Then he adds, baldly, "They're very gay-friendly." Which feels stupid and embarrassing the moment it's out of his mouth, but he can't un-say it.

"Christ Jesus, you found a hockey team in Lotus-land?"

"Samwell. I meant the _school_ is gay-friendly."

"Ah--New England, super pretentious?"

"Three genders of bathrooms, hair every colour of the rainbow."

"So is this your way of breaking up with me?"

Jack's first, surprised thought is: _I didn't know we were together._ And he immediately feels bad, because if his friend thought they _were_ , what would the last year have been like? His face and chest are hot with shame, surprise, remorse, embarrassment, and he can tell this is not a year ago because right now he _knows_ that. He knows, viscerally, not to hunch his head forward and double down on the lump in his throat. He tilts his head back, keeping his body loose, and breathes through the lump; when tears threaten his eyes he doesn't fight them, although they are only a momentary impulse and don't spill in the end. And breathing very deeply he says, "I love you. You are my best friend, and I love you. That hasn't changed." He takes a minute to swallow and Kent's face immediately hardens because he knows what's coming, and Jack doesn't know how not to make this be what Kent's expecting. "But we're not going to the same place anymore, Parse. I don't know where I'm going, but I have to find out. If I'd… made the draft a year ago and gone with you, or if I went with you now, you would be the best part of that life. Absolutely the best part. But doing something for just one… or two good parts," (he rapidly adds _hockey_ to his calculation next to _Parse_ ) "Isn't enough to cancel out everything else. I can't do what you want. I can't be with you."

"You're full of shit," Kent says. "I know where you're going. You're going to the Stanley Cup. Look me in the eye and say you're not."

"I might do it with somebody else," Jack says desperately.

Kent stays still for a minute, and then he nods, stony-faced. "If that's what you're gonna do."

Jack's heart is pounding in his chest. "I'm gonna try."

"Okay." Kent heaves out a sigh. He gets to his feet, easily, then turns and faces out across the lake, toward the cabin. Then he looks back over his shoulder. "And if you get tired of fucking Lotus Land, we'll always have Vegas."

He dives into the lake and starts swimming for shore, and Jack is not too mired in grief to admire a witty one-liner. And, amid its bitterness, the generosity of what Parse just gave him.

With a sigh of his own Jack reaches over and starts the dock's grumbling outboard motor. Steering it in a deliberate parabola to avoid Kent's path (and the furious swearing due to result when he and his dock putt-putt their way past), he sets out for home.


End file.
